In the study of design processes for service innovation and development, it is useful to adopt a perspective of ‘temporary organi- sations’. This is especially true when there is a design agency working with a service organisation, within a limited time frame, as in this instance with the DeSID case studies. ‘Temporary organisations’ is an area of study
with many different aspects (see for exam- ple the work of Jonas Söderlund), however in this essay we will view these temporary organisations as the blending of practices, using a situated learning perspective (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This angle will broaden the interpretation of the details of such projects that are speciic to the collaboration between a design agency and a service organization and take the discussion beyond the more common description of the organisational relationship. By considering the blending of practices we can avoid or uncover assumptions about the ‘client-designer’ category: e.g. the assumption
that the act of designing is conducted only by the ‘designer’ as something that is added from the ‘outside’ to the ‘client’ organisation.
To exemplify how such a perspective may help guide an analysis, here, we will look at the DeSID cases, focusing on the blending of prac- tices using three lenses, exhibited through the expression of frictions, lows and dichotomies in the case material. The case material used for the essay has been quotes collected by the DeSID research team, so rather than being read as comprehensive result, the examples should be viewed as hints.
Follow the frictions
When practices meet in temporary organi- sations frictions may ensue. A friction is not necessarily negative for a project, and it is not always expressed in negative terms. However, within a service innovation or development project, frictions typically occur when there is an overlap or conlict between practices of the actors in the temporary organisation, or a lack
(NHS24). This tells us how parts of the tem- porary organisation were set up; most of the design activities were done without participa- tion from the service organisation. Moreover, it tells us that this actor was not being an active learning participant in the practices of the designers. One may then wonder whether this is mirrored with the participation of the design organisation in the activities and practices of the service organisation, or whether there is an asymmetry in learning. However, the ser- vice organisation as well as the design agency, were temporary peripheral participants in speciic areas of each other’s practices, with which they were allowed to engage. In these instances, the differences between the prac- tices of the actors are highlighted, such as in this statement from the service organisa- tion “they took along visual representations; they had prototypes, they’d all the things that we just didn’t have the skills to kind of do it.” (Scottish Government). There is a distinct ‘we’ and ‘them’ dyad in these statements, where the two organisations probably agree on what the result of the project should be, but differ in opinion on for what purpose the result is created. This shows through in the attitude towards the deployment of the result “We’ve made the decisions about /…/ how we are going to use some of their ideas” (Scottish Government). Here there is evidence of very little active blending or integration of practices, which creates a temporary organisation where available resources are not integrated.
Deconstruct low
In several of the DeSID cases the processes seem to have been smooth, regardless of the relationship between the organisations. When using the situated learning perspective, as we are doing here, one may want to deconstruct these lows, to understand how the practices hook into each other, how they capitalize on the differences in perspective and competences, or how smooth collaborative processes hide challenges through avoiding conlict.
through and we were partnered in a way which did require an element of trust that we didn’t need to fully understand, it just needed us to believe that it was a tried and tested approach and it would arrive at the results that we wanted or more than the results that we wanted” (Certitude). However, this was depending on differences in practices: “what they brought to the partnership is something that we didn’t have, what we brought was something that they didn’t have” (Certitude). While being different as practices, in this case, they were temporarily shared and formed to integrate the resources towards an outcome that neither practice would have achieved on its own.
In another case the results of the project contributed to the legitimization of the service approach as such “So we kind of won a lot of people over to it from the report itself” (Scot- tish Government). The results of the project thus provided the opportunity to contribute to a larger project: “In terms of how the site will look on line there’s a bigger project called ‘mygov.scot’ which is happening and we’ve
been able to share the [design agency] stuff and the work that we’ve been doing with them and they were really interested in what we were up to and they wanted us to be part of the project” (Scottish Government). Here the organisation reveals (and thus deconstructs the low) that behind this success they had to put in a lot of work as translators: “The language is different and I spent a good part of my time explaining for now mostly the stake- holders, as to what for example a blueprint is, what this diagram is, and what it’s telling them” (Scottish Government). By making the vocabulary and concepts their own, using the results from the project, they were able to take leadership, legitimize and transfer part of the practice into a larger project.
Finding and deconstructing lows in a mate- rial sometimes is tedious work; the examples above are merely scratching the surface. To be able to do this, one needs to ind an ‘opening’. A good place to start is to look at how practices are activated, or how work is divided and con- strued in the temporary organisation. One may also identify the kind of work that is not being done by any actor, or work that is assumed that some other actor or practice is taking care of. Moreover, as in the irst example, one may look for how the different kinds of work are taken care of, and carried forward through to other
Alternative dominating dichotomy
When taking a perspective that the projects are temporary organisations, we assume that they are compositions of practices from differ- ent actors and organisations. However, if we look beyond the dominating dichotomies exhib- ited in a situation, e.g. the dichotomy between the agency and the client, other observations may emerge that either reinforce the tradi- tional construed dichotomy or offer alternative relational and practice interpretations.
In some of the DeSID cases there were already design practices in place in the service organ- isations. One of the service organisations articulates that they already had a practice of working with their customers, which also forms some of their expectations “our view of the customer was a little bit tainted as a manufacturer in terms of what the customers actually thought about the product and how they worked” (Nuaire). In this speciic case this practice does not seem to be integrated or built upon with the practice brought by the design agency in the temporary organisation. The designer say “So effectively they’d asked us to go away and present a bunch of concepts to them rather than, so it wasn’t particularly co-created it was more consultancy on what they should do” (PDR). Continuing such an analysis would focus our attention on the dichotomy between the designerly practices in the two different organisations (Lantz & Holmlid, 2010).
In another case we can see traces of how the temporary organisation is set up based on integration of practices. The designer says “so in terms of the communication I think we tend to work quite collaboratively with clients and see them more as partners than clients. So yeah lots of back and forth and it’s very much they’re doing work as well as we’re doing work on the project, so we both need each other to actually make stuff happen” (Innovation Unit). The service organisation echoes this “they always gave us homework and I was always talking about this to the team saying ‘every time we have the meeting with Innovation Unit they are giving us a massive load of tasks” (Certitude). It is central to this project that there is a mutual need between the practices, which becomes the pivot for joint work, they seem to have a shared view of what the goal of the project is (Malmberg & Holmlid, 2013). In this case our focus is drawn to aspects of e.g. mutual learning.
Allowing alternative dichotomies to domi- nate an analysis, is a stance that focuses on understanding the areas and practices of the participating actors that are activated in the temporary organisation, and inding perspec- tives and practices that they share, those that distinguish them from each other, or those that join them together. As an analytic stance it helps direct our attention away from the things that creates assumed divides between actors. Beyond the cases of DeSID
In this essay we have viewed the cases in DeSID as temporary organisations, using a perspective on this temporary organisation as a composition of practices. When looking at how these practices blend and integrate, we could identify speciic aspects of those pro- jects that relate to e.g. service design. In the Nuaire case there was a difference in ways of working with customers, where the practices did not integrate or blend but the two organisations complemented each other. On the other hand, in the Certitude case, joint work and learning was at the heart of the pro- cess. In the case of the Scottish Government, the mutual learning seem to have been scarce, although the service organization gained internal legitimacy, and could take on some leadership, from working with the design organisation.
Given this, further multidisciplinary analyses can be made based on the following concepts:
− Integration of practices; how practices integrate based on processes, ways of working, resources, expertise, division of labour, professional learning, etc.
− Organizational and individual expecta- tions; how expectations are formed and inluence the projects, such as the previ- ous experience of design work, previous experience of insourcing competence and capacity, expectations from shared or disjoint project focus, conception of the nature of design, conception of the nature of service, etc.
− Legitimization processes; how the different practices and perspectives are legitimized within the participating organizations, based on conceptions of focus of outcome, roles, learning processes, conception of what the core practice is, processes of mutual adapta- tion and change, etc.
− Leadership; how leadership is shared, transferred and supported within the temporary organisation, in the different practices and organisations during as well as after a project.
In this section we will discuss what we learned about the original question of what is the contribution of Service Design to NSD and Service Innovation. We also discuss how we can re-interpret Service Design by adopting a Service Logic and Design Anthropology lenses.
Positioning service design
Contribution of Design to New Service Development
Each case study illustrates a different level and kind of contribution to a New Service Development process. We discuss here designer’s role within what we identiied as main NSD stages.
All projects required a procurement stage, which was generally anticipated by an initial market research by the client organisation. Procurement is a fundamental stage as it informs the generation of the project brief and the selection of design companies.
Apart from differences related to public or pri- vate procurement processes, design agencies were required to present a proposal (Snook and Innovation Unit), a set of initial outputs (PDR) or a pitch (anonymous, Wilson Fletcher, and Made by Many) to respond to an initial brief or problem and to negotiate a process. This is a fundamental stage as it sets the conditions and tone for the collaboration and scope of the project and it should be considered already as a contribution in itself to the innovation process.
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They were the ones that we went with in the end and they are clearly technically highly proficient. I think that they really understood the challenge that was before us;they seemed genuinely really excited by it and probably most importantly I felt that they were a really good culture fit for us UMG
Factors that inluenced the choice of the agencies were the ability to challenge the client and bring a fresh view, the collaborative and customer centred approach, the techni- cal competence, as well as a sort of cultural / organisational it. At the same time clients had to accept designers as being “a bit disorgan- ised”, using a “weird language”, and to trust the process to allow change and learning. The brief was at this stage in some cases pur- posely left open, with some initial negotiations, while in other situations it was perceived as more prescriptive in the expected outputs.
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It was a very different approach for us and it was also really helpful to be able to download all of our kind of ideas that weren’t particularly thought through […] What we then ended up with was a process that was very new, clearly very thought through and we were partnered in a way which did require an element of trust.Certitude
Half of the case studies do stop at a Design stage, where designers deine and visualise ideas for their evaluation and further devel- opment by the client organisation. This stage is always anticipated by a Research stage, which is generally not represented in NSD process cycles, but it is where designers and collaborators engage in ield and desk research to inform innovation. This is the fundamental stage where NSD can actually learn to look into what organisational offer-
this research happens depends on the kind of project and collaboration, and it is mostly done independently by the agency or sometimes in collaboration with the client or other partners. Some research approaches are traditional ethnographic (interviews, site visits) or mar- keting methods (focus groups, mystery calls, competitor analysis). Often though design- ers develop ad hoc tools depending on the audience, to enhance engagement and data collection through fun and accessible exer- cises; this is perceived as generally very valuable and effective in reaching out difi- cult audiences where the client is not able to, while in some situations some research activities were perceived as excessive and over designed.
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We don’t like to have just kind ofstandard tools that we always use so like when it’s the young people we are just like oh we’ll do it like a pizza and then we’ll order pizza for them and it will be like a fun thing. Snook
Key contribution to the process was described as the capability to then translate the collected data into manageable visualisations, able to summarise complex systems (stakeholder map, blueprints) or intangible and subjective matters (persona, journey maps, videos), and to become a tangible object of conversations or co-design activities. These visualisations were very appreciated by client organisations as they created the needed evidence for change as well as inspire clients to transform their initial understanding and perspective.
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The day in the life of a casting director [...] was a real example of service design thinking, because it did take so many different angles into account and it really was seen through the lens of a customer’s experience, and not a web-user, not a book-reader […] I think that was a realmoment of clarity for us. It also enabled us to articulate what we wanted from our development team very well so it was really
stakeholder from this side, it made it very, very easy to sell into the business what I wanted.
Spotlight
The research stage often overlaps with Design
actvities; co-design events or early prototyp-
ing are used to gather data, but also to start informing, discussing and developing ideas in an iterative process. This collaborative and iterative approach based on draft and develop- ing design materials, are also described as a vehicle to instil a different way of working and approaching change, which aims at reducing bureaucracy and siloed systems, enhance dialogue and more equal interactions centred on understanding users and materialising better solutions and experiences. The way the design process ends then depends on the kind of collaboration between designers and cli- ents; in some cases there is a distinct project hand over, with a inal presentation of design recommendations to the client (e.g. blueprint, use cases, persona, project report, powerpoint presentation), or a stage where clients become more independent to take over early proto- types and ideas to further develop the project if the relationship is more collaborative.
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They created initially some supporting visuals and guides for us to do some audit work. Then they had a few presentations where they brought back results to us and did competitor analysis. We then narrowed down the project to a specific area that would make impact to the business and they did more investigation work and presented that back to us as a final pdf and PowerPoint presentation to explain what they thought the recommendations were.Nuaire
The analysis stage is then when the ideas and insights are evaluated, and the project or part of it, is signed off for development. In this stage designers are generally not involved and the process is slowed down to allow the buy in from seniors or investors. This is also where designers can loose sight of how the project develops and where choices, timings and
(e.g. design visualisations or digital proto- types). In the case of Certitude, designers participated in this stage by supporting and guiding the organisation on how to better pres- ent their work, working on slides and language, to the relevant stakeholders. At this stage poli- tics and power dynamics are also very tangible and project demonstrations and negotiations are essential to win resistances to change.
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We started to come up with ourimplementation plans and at that point the whole organisation went through a massive restructure which affected our division”. Anonymous client organisation
In three cases designers continued the collab- oration beyond the analysis stage to support also the development stage. In the case of Certitude, Innovation Unit partly supported the development stage by developing the prototypes to conduct the pilot and test the ideas, and the development of the related website with an external web design agency. Their work has though been further tested and